And the Marathon, too

While your blogger has been out of the country life at St James's has been busy with a large congregation filling the church last Saturday for Snowy Davoll's memorial service, following hot on the heels of the school service the day before.

The galleries were in use again that evening for the Bermondsey and Rotherhithe Choral Society's performance of Verdi's Requiem, and the next day we had the baptism of six children from four families, with Paul preaching at a packed family service.

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, the day of St Anne's Annual Meeting, and - of course - the London Marathon with large crowds, as usual, thronging Jamaica Rd (above) as the runners, thousands of them passed through Bermondsey in brilliant sunshine.

In church we prayed for them, but we also remembered the crowds who lined the streets of Jerusalem two thousand years ago. It was the beginning of a climactic week that changed the history of the world. It was the beginning of the week that we remember this week, and we call it Holy Week.

St James in the springtime sun on Marathon Sunday